Three-Minute Rounds
by Fixomnia Scribble
Summary: It's possible that the least romantic-sounding words he's ever said to Eddie are, "You can meet me at Donovan's, in an hour. You can hit me there." Truth being stranger than fiction, it's one of the most intimate invitations he's offered her. A short episode tag off 9x13.


_A/N: This is as close to RPF as I ever get. Joe Donovan and his gym are real. I do not know him, but I like to think he'd be somewhat amused at being thrown into the BB universe as a mentor of sorts._

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It's possible that the least romantic-sounding words he's ever said to Eddie are, "You can meet me at Donovan's, in an hour. You can hit me there."

Truth being stranger than fiction, it's one of the most intimate invitations he's offered her: access into one of his deeply private spaces. She's always known about his sparring workouts and occasional rage-venting at the bag at Joe Donovan's boxing gym in Queens, but she learned after tracking him down there once that it's where he goes to disappear. She knows what it represents to him.

It's solitude, away from his crowded, chronically intrusive family. A chance to hang up his teeming brain and not have to talk. To let out the stress and anger that he feels just as much as Danny, to burn off the bitter cynicism that wells up just as deep as his father's, _without hurting anyone_. Without anyone seeing, except Joe Donovan – himself the son of Paul Berlenbach, the light-heavyweight "Astoria Assassin" – and a couple of his regular sparring partners.

He'd started boxing lessons at Donovan's when he was seventeen and stressed out over every little thing, from scholarship season to Danny being out of contact in Fallujah to Grandma getting sick. "Think on your toes!" Joe would tell him, a steady stream of directions interrupting his mental earthquakes. "Where's your weight going? Where's your feet pointing?"

"What, is this dance class?" Jamie would snark back, far unlike anything he would think of saying to anyone else of his parents' age. Joe would just grin, and remind him that dancing was a gentlemanly art, just as proper boxing was a gentlemanly sport.

"Don't knock dancing, Reagan. You know how Ali danced."

Carefully, Joe had unravelled the combination of police and Marine techniques and basic dirty fighting that Jamie had absorbed during his childhood, between his father and his siblings, and built him into a decent boxer by the time he left for Harvard. Jamie had continued to drop in whenever he was home from school. He'd competed in some local tournaments, to good effect – well enough to keep the real talent on its toes, anyway, though he wasn't in it for the wins.

When he came home from Cambridge for good, and began training for his NYPD physical, he upped his time with Joe, and took him on as a personal trainer.

"You're gonna do better than a lotta cadets," Joe told him, "Because you already _know_ who your opponent is and how he thinks."

"Me."

"'At's right."

He's rarely gone a week without a proper workout at Donovan's since then, though some months the time just hasn't been there. Joe doesn't rag him for it. Jamie's one of his kids, after more than twenty years, and he always comes back. It's where he goes when he's had enough of everyone else, enough of his own brain. Joe knows by the look on his face whether to tie up his gloves and let him hit the bag for an hour before coaching him.

Jamie definitely hadn't wanted Eddie anywhere near Donovan's, for a long time. He was her TO, and she didn't need to see all the toxic crap in him coming out. It was true that some partners trained and sparred together, but Eddie was already going to the regular police judo sessions, and later, kickboxing classes with Kara. Besides, his sparring partners were usually close to his own size and weight and skill, or bigger. It made sense to train up, not down.

But none of those was the real reason for his hesitation.

He'd been more than a little in love with bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked Eddie at her fightiest from the very beginning. The way she forgot her cultured speech and refined movements, and threw down and let him have it, right from her gut, when he deserved it. He loved that the only thing that could rile her up more than something getting under her skin was when someone else needed saving. The way she held nothing back. He knew even then that it wasn't just a fierce mask for a small woman, but a part of herself that was fired up by injustice, and to make things right, and to test herself.

That was something he could understand very well.

Joe Donovan always said that boxing let you see your opponent's real self in ways that other sports didn't. Like a legal courtroom battle of wits, only far more honest, more revealing, Jamie thought.

Problem was, he couldn't let that happen with Eddie. They'd already spent too much time close to the line. He'd almost suggested that they try physically sparring once or twice, after some rough patch of verbally scrapping to the extent of inflicting actual hurt. It might do them good. But the very thought of it stirred him in ways he had no business bringing into the cruiser with them. Occasional play-wrestling like little kids and frequent (constant) trash-talking and barging into one another's personal space was dangerous enough.

They were like a pair of orbiting stars, back then, and there was no telling whether they'd find a stable orbit or if they'd go supernova and destroy each other, if they fell over the event horizon.

No, Donovan's had to remain his retreat.

That is, until they'd incurred a week of suspension-vacation for telling off Hollis to his face for getting too close to the truth. Bouncy Barry had bounced himself off somewhere (for the first time), and despite Eddie's best-laid plans for the week, her kickboxing gym was closed due to a power issue.

"Come to mine," he'd heard himself say over the phone, as they wound down their days, each lying in their otherwise cold and empty beds.

She'd paused for a long moment. "Sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," she said slowly. "What…what do I need?"

Joe adored Eddie instantly. And the look he'd given Jamie told him clearly that he knew Jamie had just brought a girl home to meet Dad, and that Dad approved.

And how could he not? She wasn't just sparky and cute. She was totally focussed in her body from the get-go, took corrections well and didn't need pushing so much as occasional reminders to pace herself. When he got them set up in the ring together after some drills, he'd told her to use the moves he'd taught her, and not to improvise with other muscle memory – but within a few minutes of watching them, he'd laughed.

"I get it, Reagan," he'd said.

"That mean he can stop treating me like a girl?" she'd shot back.

"That's up to you two. Three-minute rounds, now. No winners today. Just keep moving."

"I'll three minute _you_," he'd taunted her, grinning like a fool, not caring how it might sound. She gave him that warning head-tilt and upward glance, and came at him like a small, well-controlled fury. She had an efficient jab-and-retreat that he had to work to predict. She was trained to surprise and disarm, rather than overcome, as he was.

"That," was her verdict afterwards, as he drove her home in his Mustang, "was _so fucking fun_."

She hadn't demanded to know what took him so long to invite her, and he loved her all the more for it.

Since then, since the world nearly caved in on them and finally righted itself with the two of them firmly entwined, she's joined him there a few more times. The fact that she's never asked means a great deal to him. But she's delighted when he does invite her to join him. They both need their spaces. She has hers, too.

Mostly she likes to work her upper body with the heavy bag or the speedbag while he lifts or spars. They finish with a few three-minute rounds once they're good and warmed up, with the worst of their stress burned off. They're not gentle. They're serious and they leave occasional bruises, but they're so attuned to each other by now that it's like dancing anyway.

So when Eddie seems to be stricken with a bout of insecurity, one day a few months into their engagement, he's surprised and dismayed. Leaping into the abyss together with no previous romantic partnership to anchor them is turning out to be harder than either of them expected. In trying to keep things simple and normal at work, he's unwittingly left her wondering whether her occasional shakiness is all one-sided, and if he feels any of the anxieties or fears she does.

Which, of course, he does. He's tried to tell her a few times. He's legendarily bad at it.

He thought he'd try to spoil her with romantic attentiveness all weekend, maybe take her dancing. But after shift, she's back on her game, with a gleam in her eye and a spring in her ponytail. He watches her with open pride as she signs out. She's had quite a week, between taking down a ring of drug fraudsters, saving a young boy from being removed from his mother, and ensuring he'll get the insulin he needs.

She's just so damn wonderful.

Sometimes the right words do come when the opportunity presents itself. The way she looks right into him, when he gives her another reason _why_ he loves her, with words she can hold onto…and the way her cheeks color up when they fall back into their old familiar back-and-forth...

Okay, maybe dancing isn't what they need right now.

"I'd like to hit you _so bad_ right now…" she drawls, with that mock glare that so often ends in a breathless, handsy makeout session these days.

"But you can't," he grins. "But you can meet me at Donovan's in an hour. You can hit me there."

Just like in the old days, he's glad nobody heard them. Sooner or later, everyone's going to have to know about their relationship. But meanwhile, they can keep their paired orbit from spinning out as long as they find their center of gravity now and then. Whether dancing or in three-minute rounds.


End file.
